Grosvenor House Hotel

Waiters Day, Monsanto, White Pride & The Line – 2015

Waiters Day, Monsanto, White Pride & The Line: Saturday 23rd May 2015 was a busy day, beginning with Unite Hotel Worker, moving on to the global March Against Monsanto, then an extreme right White Pride protest and finally going to the opening of the world-class sculpture walk roughly along the Greenwich Meridian, The Line.

Waiters Day call for fair contracts and union rights

Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane

*Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union President Ian Hodson*

The Hotel Workers branch of Unite protested outside the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, the birthplace of Zero Hours Contracts, on National Waiters Day, calling for an end to poor conditions, poverty wages, zero hours contracts and management stealing of tips.

Some of the protesters wore masks and placards with names of leading company bosses using zero hours contracts and exploiting workers and took part in a short ‘waiters race’ along the pavement in front of the hotel. The race was of course fixed

Back in 1979 waiters at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane were sacked when they tried to organise a trade union branch there. The case eventually went to court where it was decided their sacking was legal. It was this case, O’Kelly v Trusthouse Forte plc, that opened to door to Zero Hours Contracts in the UK. Previously employment law had been based on “mutuality of obligation” with employers obliged to offer hours of work, and employees to work those hours.

Until 2012 less than 1% of employees were on zero hours contracts, but their use then rocketed, and by 2015 had increased to 2.5%. By 2021, roughly half of the organisations in hospitality and entertainment were using them.

National Waiters Day seems to have been invented in the USA in the early years of this century and is generally observed on May 21st. A UK Waiters Day was begun by restaurant manager Fred Sirieix in 2013 and is on October 20th.

Waiters Day – fair contracts and union rights

March Against Monsanto

Downing St

In London the annual Global March Against Monsanto by over 3.5 million people across 600 cities was marked by a small static protest opposite Downing St.

Monsanto and other companies which profit from GMOs claim they are playing an important part in feeding the world, but are actually attempting to monopolise food production for their own profit, patenting existing species, trying to prevent farmers from saving and using their own seed, encouraging the use of highly toxic chemicals and practices that degrade the soil.

As the protesters say, we need to plant our own seed, to grow local and to eat sustainable food, and to do so in our own ways in countries across the world.

March Against Monsanto

White pride protest for David Lane

US Embassy

*The end of the banner reading Töten für Wotan (Kill for Wotan) was rolled up as I moved to photograph it*

A group of around 30 ultra-right neo-Nazi protesters at the US Embassy remembered David Eden Lane, a convicted criminal and author of the ‘14 words’ statement used by extreme right groups about securing a future for white children. A small group of anti-fascists had come to oppose them.

*One of the right-wing protesters makes a Nazi salute for my camera*

Lane was a co-foounder of ‘The Order‘ a rabidly antisemitic group which bombed theatres and synagogues and he was convicted as the getaway driver after they murdered liberal Jewish Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984 when he was the second on their long death list. The group also carried out violent robberies to finance their activities. He died in prison in 2007.

His 14 words, a close quotation from Mein Kampf, is often referred to in extreme right circles as ’14/88′, where 88 stands for the repeated 8th letter of the alphabet, HH, shorthand for ‘Heil Hitler’.

*Peter Rushton of the England First Party waits to speak*

Inside jail, Lane, a former Ku Klux Klan and the ‘White Christian Separatist’ group ‘Aryan Nation’ member, was one of the founders of a new pagan religion, ‘Wotanism‘, named after the Germanic god Odin, also know as Wotan, which serves as an acronym for ‘Will Of The Aryan Nation’.

White pride protest for David Lane

Cody Dock Opening for ‘The Line’

Bow Creek, West Ham

It was good to get away to something much more pleasant, the official opening of the world-class sculpture walk, ‘The Line‘ with works by distinguished sculptors going north from Greenwich across the Thames and on to the Olympic Park.

I’d visited the festivities at Cody Dock in the morning when few people were around to photograph the site and walk a short stretch of the trail.

One piece I found particularly interesting was DNA SL90 (2003) made by Abigail Fallis from 22 shopping trolleys for a supermarket chain to mark the 50th anniversary of Crick & Watson’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. It’s location on the edge of Bow Creek next to a major distribution centre, seemed particularly appropriate, and it is an impressive piece.

*A Cody Dock volunteer snips the ribbon and ‘The Line’ is open*

I returned from central London just in time for the opening ceremony when a fair sized crowd had gathered.

Since 2015 new stairs down from the bridge at have removed the awkward detour alongside the busy Blackwall Tunnel Approach, but I think we are still waiting for the opening of the riverside path along Bow Creek south of Cody Dock.

Cody Dock Opening f or ‘The Line’

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Property Developer’s Awards – 2017

Property Developer’s Awards: On Tuesday 4th April 2017 I joined protesters on the pavement in front of the Grosvenor House Hotel in Mayfair where the annual Property Developers Awards were being held .

Property developers largely operate at one of the greedier ends of capitalism, many clearly putting their profits above everything else. Of course we need to build things, but we need to build the right things rather than those that maximise profits for the developers. Capitalism and the market doesn’t serve the interests of the vast majority.

In London we are clearly not building the right things. The desperate need is for social housing, while developers are working together with local councils to destroy this, demolishing council estates and replacing them with largely private developments with rents and prices beyond the reach of Londoners in desperate need of housing. And landlords are making obscene profits for lousy (sometimes literally) accommodation.

London councils have huge waiting lists for social housing and an estimated 210,000 Londoners are homeless and living in temporary accommodation, including 102,000 homeless children. The situation is now even worse than in 2017 and London councils now spend around £5.5 million per day on homelessness.

And yet there are huge developments taking place in London, but so many of these are for student housing and expensive private flats, many bought by overseas investors and remaining empty for all or most of the year. Because these are the kind of developments that make the largest profits for the property developers.

Of course gaining planning permission for many developments require them to include social housing and ‘affordable housing’. “Affordable housing is used by governments to mean 80% of market prices – something totally unaffordable for most people – the term true Orwellian doublespeak.” But if the developers feel they are not getting enough profit when building they can simply ask for a reduction in these and it gets granted.

*Cockroaches crawl around a poster next to the manure*

*which a hotel employee tries to sweep up as Ian Bone walks in front with a siren*

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has funding of up to £11.7 billion for a ‘London Social and Affordable Homes Programme 2026-36‘, but it remains to be seen what this will actually deliver – other of course than profits for the developers.

*Jane Nicholl confronts a man going into the Property Developer’s Awards who seems amused by being accused of social cleansing*

Of course both developers and councils who work with them do so in a political atmosphere which since Thatcher has made providing social housing much more difficult. But some councillors and officers have joined with developers in pursuing their personal fortunes rather than public good.

*People from the Property Developer’s Awards came out to have a cigarette and watch the protest*

“The protesters, who included queer coalition the Sexual Avengers and Class War say the developers demolishing social housing and community facilities across London in a process of social cleansing aided by largely Labour councils and led by Savills who sponsor the awards and were nominated for six of them. They are demolishing council estates and replacing most of their social housing with high cost private developments, often largely sold to foreign investors and making obscene profits – and tickets for this event were £396 per seat.”

*Ian Bone directs some of those coming to the Property Developer’s Awards, calling them “rich scum”*

The protesters made their views very clear, calling those entering the Award beanfeast ‘scum’ and ‘parasites.’ A small group rushed up to the hotel entrance and dumped a sack of horse manure and coackroaches in front of it. A hotel employees came out with a bin and broom to try to sweep it up.

*Police hold back a woman giving those coming to the awards the finger*

The protest continued with Class War in particular confronting the developers as they arrived and police ensuring they could walk past and enter, holding back the protesters. Some of those entering appeared to be amused by the idea they were ‘social cleansing’ and a small group came out to watch the protest.

*Class War – Our Estates Are Not for Sale – No Developers, Estate Agents, Gentrifiers or Bent Councillors – We Know What You’re Up to – Keep Away!*

More pictures at Property Developer’s Awards.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves

Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves: Eight years ago on Tuesday 12 April 2015 I photographed housing activists protesting outside the expensive dinner at a Mayfair hotel for the 2015 Property Awards. The protesters held their own alternative awards ceremony for housing protesters as a part of the event.

Among those in my pictures is Aysen from the Aylesbury Estate. The Fight4Aylesbury exhibition in her flat on the estate continues today, Friday 21st April 2023, and on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd. Parts of some of my pictures from this event were used in collages in that show.

Property Awards at Mayfair Hotel – Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane

Greedy Property Developers Reward Themselves

Property developers have powered the incredible rise in London Housing prices by building luxury flats for mainly overseas investors, many of which remain unoccupied to be sold later at even higher prices to other investors, and also by working with London councils to redevelop social housing largely for private sale.

Together with the actions of successive governments – Tory and Labour – they had created what by 2015 was clearly the worst shortage of affordable housing in history, with a record number of evictions and the doubling of rough sleeping in London. Over 50,000 families have had to move out of London while many more properties in the capital remain empty.

As I wrote: “Housing in London has ceased to be something to meet human need, and instead is servicing greed and selfishness.” And the expensive dinner taking place that evening in the luxury Mayfair hotel was to give awards to the property developers for their greed. Among those taking part in the protest outside were people from estates which are being redeveloped, including Southwark Council’s Aylesbury estate and Sweets Way in north London who were facing eviction because of the policy of social cleansing driven by councils and developers.

People arriving at the dinner were met by a noisy crowd calling for a fair housing policy outside the ‘red carpet’ entrance to the hotel on Park Lane and had to walk past the protesters to enter. Police tried to keep the entrance clear and some hotel staff directed the guests to other entrances to the hotel, where the protesters also followed.

The protesters held an alternative awards ceremony in front of the hotel entrance, awarding large cardboard cups for the Young Protester of the Year, Placard Making, Demonstration of the Year and Occupation of the Year.

Protesters also briefly occupied occupied a neighbouring branch of estate agents Foxton, who have played a leading role in the gentrification of London. Together with other estate agents they have also been an important influence on the housing policies of both Tory and Labour.

Foxtons is notorious among those who rent property for driving up rents – and in 2022 the London Renters Union reported that their annual revenue had increased by £5m as rents in London went up by an average of 20.5% in 3 months, with one Foxtons tenant reporting a rise of £12,000 per year!

Shortly before I left it became clear that most of those coming to the dinner were being directed to a rear service entrance to the hotel and the protesters moved around the block to hold a rally there. The gate was rapidly closed and there were some minor scuffles as police attempted to move the protesters away. I heard later that there had been two arrests after I left.

Many more pictures at Property Awards at Mayfair Hotel.

Land Justice, Hizb Ut-Tahrir & Grenfell

Land Justice, Hizb Ut-Tahrir & Grenfell.
Protests in London on 14th April 2018 calling for Land Justice, against Turkey’s support of Assad in Syria and ten months after the Grenfell fire.

The Landlords’ Game – Mayfair, Belgravia & Brompton

I photographed a tour of London’s wealthiest areas led by the Land Justice Network which reminded us that land ownership in Britain is one of the most unequal in the world, both in rural areas and in cities.

This unequal ownership of land is the basis of our class system and the aggregation of wealth and inequality that have led to our present crisis levels of homelessness and degradation. Largely beginning with the Norman conquest, the battles over land have continued over the centuries, with the enclosure of common land and the current redevelopment of public land, particularly council estates, as private housing for the wealthy.

The tour began in Mayfair, where the land is largely owned by the Duke of Westminster, along with much more of the London borough, although the family’s Grosvenor Group Limited has diversified and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosvenor_Group according to Wikipedia also owns properties in other parts of Britain and Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia, the Asia Pacific region and parts of Europe.

From a rally at its meeting point in Brown Hart Gardens where there were songs and speeches by the Land Justice Network, the Landworkers Alliance, the tour including activists from Class War and the Revolutionary Communist Group marched to Grosvenor Square where we listed to a surprisingly lucid account of the anti-Vietnam war protest there on 27th October 1968. I think I was there too, but other than a vague recollection of wildly charging police horses and panic can remember little – and in those days I didn’t even have a camera that worked.

We moved off, stopping briefly at a house known to have been left empty for around 15 years, one of many such empty properties in a city with a huge housing shortage to call for councils to be able to levy truly punitive council tax or requisition long-term empty properties.

A short distance along the road we stopped at ‘Grouse House’ owned by Odey Asset Management whose owner Crispin Odey formed ‘You Forgot the Birds’ to oppose RSPB who want to stop the killing of birds for what is wrongly called sport.

There was a speech by Private Eye journalist Richard Brooks who with his colleague Christian Eriksson set about untangling the great offshore corporate web that covers the country – and you can download his report Tax Havens – Selling England By The Offshore Pound from the Private Eye web site.

Kat from the RCG (Revolutionary Communist Group) also spoke, reminding us that the CIty of London is a huge3 tax haven and the money laundering capital of the world.

The tour continue to Park Lane, where there was a short protest outside estate agent Foxtons which sells and rents some of the most expensive property in London, and Class War were prominent in pointing out that both the Tory government and the Labour local authorities have relied on estate agents to direct their housing strategies.

The tour stopped again on Park Lane outside the Grosvenor House Hotel, the venue for the notorious annual Property Developers Awards before crossing into Hyde Park, open to the public since 1637, but where we were reminded of the battles to make many other parks public, and how now many have only been saved by the growth of groups of volunteer ‘Friends’. We also heard a plea for more free public toilets. Many were closed in the 1980s because of a ‘gay scare’ and others such as those at Hyde Park Corner now charge for use – 50p a visit here.

Across Knightsbridge we walked along one of the most expensive streets in Britain, Grosvenor Crescent to a statue of the first Marquess of Westminster on the corner of Belgrave Square, which has a plaque stating the family came here with William the Conqueror. He divided out the conquered land and many great estates date from then, though the Grosvenor Estate holdings in London came to them when 3rd Baronet Sir Thomas Grosvenor married Mary Davies, the heiress to the 500 acre Manor of Ebury in 1677. He was 21 at the time, but she was only 12. The estate, then largely swamps later became Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia.

A left the tour here for a few minutes to photograph the Hizb Ut-Tahrir protest outside the Turkish Embassy, but rejoined it later at the final rally in Cadogan Square, part of the 93 acres of the Cadogan Estate which includes the wealthiest parts of Kensington & Chelsea. Much of the money which enabled Sir Hans Sloane to buy the Manor of Chelsea came from African slave labour on sugar estates in Jamaica. His daughter Elizabeth Sloane married Charles Cadogan in 1712.

Hizb Ut-Tahrir protest against Turkey – Turkish Embassy, Belgrave Square

Hizb Ut-Tahrir Britain, Sunni Muslims who call for the restoration of the Muslim caliphate which whose armies conquered much of the Middle East in 632-661CE, were protesting against Turkish complicity in handing Syria back to Assad in accordance with colonial interests and calling for Muslims to support the brave people of Palestine who “are raising their voices to speak out and protest against the illegal occupation, as they are mercilessly killed by the Zionist regime.”

*Women were strictly segregated from men at the protest and some stewards were unhappy for me to photograph them.*

Their criticism of Turkey goes back to the 1922 abolition of the Ottoman state and the Turkish recognition of the Zionist occupation of Palestine in 1949, and they accuse President Erdogan of strengthening Turkish military and economic ties with Israel. They claim the Turkish state is a secular state “whose role is to protect the colonialist’s interests in our lands, defending and strengthening our enemies who murder us in Syria and Palestine” and call on “Muslims to join us to STAND, STRUGGLE AND SACRIFICE FOR PALESTINE.”

Grenfell – 10 months on – Kensington Town Hall

A large crowd was assembling at Kensington Town Hall for the monthly silent walk marking 10 months since the disaster. They hold Kensington and Chelsea Council responsible for the tragedy and for failing to deal effectively with is aftermath, with many survivors still not properly rehoused.

Five years later a public inquiry is still proceeding at a snail’s pace, and there have been no prosecutions of those responsible for approving and installing the highly dangerous cladding on the tower block, for cutting costs, for failing to install the cladding properly, for governments cutting out essential safety regulations which their friends in the building industry thought were ‘red tape’ hampering profits and it looks unlikely if there will ever be justice. Instead we have seen politicians trying to blame the residents for not leaving the building and almost entirely unjustified criticism of the fire service.

There were some speeches, poetry and music before the silent march began, and then a very noisy protest by bikers from the Ace Cafe including Muslim bikers Deen Riders and others taking part in a United Ride 4 Grenfell, from the Ace Cafe on the North Circular Rd, riding to Parliament and then coming to Kensington Town Hall.

The long silent walk towards Grenfell Tower began immediately after the bikers left, and I followed it for a short distance before turning away and leaving to make my way home.

More at:
Grenfell silent walk – 10 months on
Bikers for Grenfell
Hizb Ut-Tahrir protest against Turkey
The Landlords’ Game